| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Who makes the gown according to his cloth,
And unto the first Love will turn our eyes,
That looking upon Him thou penetrate
As far as possible through his effulgence.
Truly, lest peradventure thou recede,
Moving thy wings believing to advance,
By prayer behoves it that grace be obtained;
Grace from that one who has the power to aid thee;
And thou shalt follow me with thy affection
That from my words thy heart turn not aside."
And he began this holy orison.
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity
of turning the head.
The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together,
were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on
these young specimens. Their noses were but longitudinal slits in
the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.
There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very
light yellowish-green color. In the adults, as I was to learn
quite soon, this color deepens to an olive green and is darker
in the male than in the female. Further, the heads of the
adults are not so out of proportion to their bodies as in the
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